From the depressingly dank Cave of Adullam I insult your intelligence, with not a shred of conscience!

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Technology and I are Strangers

The other day the boss spoke of an attack of 'ransomware' malware. In his case this beast attacked one or two files on his work computer and he was advised by the company IT geeks to wipe the hard drive completely. This he could do as the IT has copies of all files so nothing was lost but time and effort.Therefore I decided to obtain a flash drive and store lots of things thereon and be ready with the most important items, or as many as possible, that matter in times of such attack or any other problem. It seemed good to take all the pictures amassed on many disks and collect them, in better order, on the 'stick.'So of I totter to the shops to gaze at things very different from when I last gazed at them some time back. It was clear prices were not as I'd hoped so after thought I went to E-Bay. Here I found one for £3:99 and within a week it arrived.Quickly I placed on the 32 GB monster one very large file.It worked!I added another.It didn't!In the end the files I added disappeared and the original turned into gobbledygook. That one lies over there where it landed.A second, more expensive, one soon arrived.This one worked, indeed it worked so well, once I had strained my little mind on the instructions, that by late last night I had transferred over a thousand pictures onto the disk with masses of space remaining. Marvellous, and feeling very happy I looked into various other parts of this device and noted some things that arrived when i first used the stick wrongly earlier that day. I deleted them, that should fix it thought I.When I went for the pictures collected and already on the stick I discovered they had disappeared as I had by mistake deleted everything.Now I have to start again and once more go through the long arduous job.The instructions on such technological items ought to have a warning on the top.

5 comments:

I feel your pain Sir. We have collections of USB sticks left in computers at work, but I would never dare put any in my computer. Who knows what virus is lurking on said student flash drives.Ever thought of joining the Lead Pencil Society?

You have my complete sympathy. I look at the instructions and wonder who has managed to employ Martians to write the blasted things...

Still anything is better than contacting the customer services department for elucidation: either you have FAQs which answer questions no one in their right mind would ask or you have a call centre which wishes you a good day and then buggers up all prospect of same by utterly confusing you to the sound of inappropriate music...

I ought to install a gramophone alongside the telephone and blast them with Colonel Bogey...that'd learn them...

I am here to help. First....Your pics are not deleted.... unless you used the usb stick and overwrote them. Go here, download and run Recuva free. You'll be amazed at what deleted pics it can find and rescue.https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

Then the ransomeware... It's often recoverable. Trend Micro do a free tool that you run from a usb stick.Put it on a usb stick, label it and keep it somewhere safe. You'll probably never need it. https://esupport.trendmicro.com/en-us/home/pages/technical-support/1105975.aspx

And install Malwarebytes on your computer. Also free. It will scan and destroy most evil files.https://www.malwarebytes.org/